


you are who you are

by Anonymous



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, Introspective Bullshit, M/M, choi seungcheol and the mortifying ordeal of fighting with jeonghan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:28:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25882105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When Seungcheol returned home perhaps Jeonghan wouldn’t be there, and if he wasn’t, Seungcheol would have to go on without him.
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36
Collections: Anonymous, Challenge 1: Kidult





	you are who you are

“If he apologizes first I’ll forgive him,” he admitted to the convenience store cashier. 

The cheap blue fluorescence slightly removed things from reality. Funny, the way indoor lighting created a kind of cast. Sometimes it could almost taste a certain way. That night it coated the whole scene in a diaphanous melancholy.

“Can I borrow your cell phone?” Seungcheol asked when all the cashier did was mop his own sweaty forehead and sigh.

“Don’t you own a cell phone?”

“I left it at home.” On purpose, actually. He had thought it would be a good way to stop time.

It hadn’t stopped time. It had only slowed it to a loathsome crawl.

“Alright.”

Only, when he had the phone in his hands, he realized he didn’t know Jeonghan’s number by heart. 

Seungcheol looked up and searched outside of himself, deep into the window, where he knew his own gauzy reflection would be staring back. His baleful eyes. His malcontent mouth, downturning itself at the slightest hint of distress. 

The almost-hilarious drama of his own miserable face. Those instincts were a part of who he was. Although they made him feel like an overgrown child, he clung to them.

Seungcheol thought of what Jeonghan might be doing. He thought specifically of Jeonghan’s bedside table. The big books which Jeonghan never opened, except to press flowers into and then forget about. The countless samples of perfumes in shapes of baubles and spheres and flowers, which Jeonghan, in a single testing flourish, would spritz. Then he would lean back as if appraising the path of a shooting star, and make a teasing and long thought-over remark. On hot nights, he would bring a glass of water to bed. The table would seem too cluttered for yet another object, but Jeonghan would somehow conjure up the necessary space out of nothing at all. 

That space: just enough. No more and no less. The glass would later be forgotten and gather dust, but in the moment, it would catch the lamplight and gleam. 

Wasn’t it thrilling to watch someone take so much care in being clever? 

Seungcheol slid the cashier’s phone back across the counter. He tried to unreel the rest of Jeonghan’s room in his head, like a director of photography. He could only get as far as that bedside table and the slender hand resting on the glass before someone pushed him out with a sharp elbow to the chest, and the door swung shut, and he found himself capsized in reality once more. 

Seungcheol had always been afraid of closed doors. He couldn’t help it. Looking at the light leaking from underneath, he would begin to imagine the imperceptible shift of mass just on the other side, distant motions he would never be privy to, and he’d instantly feel marooned. 

The kind of fear which revealed him eternally as a youngest brother. He hated to admit he would maybe never grow out of such things.

The convenience store began to play California Dreamin’ on the radio. That week it had been Jeonghan’s favorite song. Sometimes Jeonghan sprawled on the sofa for hours and hours with the vinyl spinning next to him, humming along, staring at nothing in particular, his feet dancing in small twitches. At the words _Well I got down on my knees,_ he would tilt his head back and hold his hands steepled to his throat, already pretending to pray. 

When Seungcheol returned home perhaps Jeonghan wouldn’t be there, and if he wasn’t, Seungcheol would have to go on without him. Even in the absence of Jeonghan’s socked-footed shuffle to the record player on nights when Seungcheol couldn't keep from sighing. Of Jeonghan’s unprompted full-body hug in the kitchen, a gentle reminder of his easily won fondness. Of sitting and watching Jeonghan tell a story from long before, when he was a kid, when they were both kids, when they were so different, and much the same. 

Even then. 

The fear inside Seungcheol’s chest had become relentless but somehow he’d grown acclimated to it quickly, like it was an old friend, like it was a damp sock. He needed to go home. He couldn’t. 

If Jeonghan had been there he would have said, get off your ass and stop moping. He would have softened it with a sly laugh, but his eyebrows would’ve been tipped up in incredulity. 

Hey, look at yourself, Choi Seungcheol. How old are you, again?

“I don’t know anymore,” Seungcheol muttered. The cashier gave him an odd look so he walked out into the night. 

He imagined being Jeonghan. What an incredible thought. If he was Jeonghan he would have pushed his shoulders back, then considered each angle of the moment. He would have known exactly what the fight needed, what he could twist it into, which final destinations might appear on the horizon. 

Jeonghan would have found it funny, maybe. 

Yes. It was very likely. Often when Jeonghan wanted to cry he would laugh instead. 

After his mother had yelled at him on the phone he’d twisted away from Seungcheol’s concern and laughed into his hand. After his little sister had been arrested last year he’d covered his eyes and laughed through his teeth. After he had lost his job he’d laughed in full-body amusement, leaned over the back of the sofa in desperation, like he was bowing to someone, like he was pretending to pray.

He never let Seungcheol see his whole face in these moments. It was another kind of closed door.

Seungcheol walked like he’d forgotten he had legs. An emergency vehicle came blaring up behind him, and for a moment he looked up to see the sidewalk flooded with lurid red. He couldn’t remember what they were fighting over. All of a sudden he really did feel like laughing, but when he opened his mouth, all that came out was a soft wounded puff of breath, and then there were silent tears dripping down his chin.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading <3


End file.
